NA TURE 



357 



THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 1878 



REPRESENTATION OF SCIENCE AT THE 

 PARIS EXHIBITION 



WE are glad to know that the interest shown in the 

 Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus at South 

 Kensington and the benefit to the nation at large to be 

 derived from such displays have not been lost upon the 

 organisers of the French part of the forthcoming Exhi- 

 bition. 



Among the most energetic and most enlightened of 

 these organisers we must count M. Bardoux himself, the 

 new Minister of Pubhc Instruction, under whose auspices 

 for the first time a well-developed scientific side will form 

 part of an International Exhibition. Culture will be 

 added to industry. Research will have its place, side by 

 side with the applications of science. 



The attempts to give prominence to this side of the 

 exhibition on the part of the French are as remarkable as 

 the complete neglect of everything touching science by 

 our own Commission. For them apparently science does 

 not exist, except the science that pays, in the shape of 

 large engines and looms, fine stuffs, machine-made jewel- 

 lery, and the like. England will have its Burlington 

 Arcade, but not its Burlington House. We give the Com- 

 mission credit for having " worked " the commercial 

 world well ; we only complain that the possibility of there 

 being anything worth exhibiting from the scientific point 

 of view never seems to have occurred to them. 



The antithesis we have drawn between the Burlington 

 Arcade and Burlington House well represents the great 

 point of the forthcoming Exhibition. There will be a 

 gigantic shop on the Champ de Mars, there will be a 

 gigantic temple devoted to the pure sciences and to 

 pure art in the Trocadero. The river will separate the 

 source from the application ; instruction in science and 

 art from commerce and industry. 



Hence it is that M. Bardoux, having already organised on 

 a large scale the representation of the fine arts and public 

 instruction, is now organising what is to be called the 

 " scientific display." This part of the work, important 

 though it be, will be rendered very simple to the Minister, 

 as the matter will be left almost entirely in the hands of 

 the men of science themselves, including, of course, those 

 men of science who direct important branches of the 

 public service as well as individual investigators. 



Thus each Government department will show the way in 

 which its scientific work is done. The three new Govern- 

 ment observatories in Paris will exhibit either results or 

 methods. There will be a complete collection illustrating 

 the various scientific missions which France has under- 

 taken during the present century, and all the publications, 

 scientific, historic, and artistic, which have been published 

 by the state will be there for all the world to see. 



Not only, therefore, will there be a true Loan Collection 

 of Scientific Apparatus, but the example set by the South 

 Kensington Conferences wills also be followed. The enor- 

 mous building in the Trocadero contains a lecture theatre 

 capable of holding upwards of 4,000 people. This will 

 be used for lectures in scientific and kindred subjects, 

 for which arrangements are now being made. It is I 

 Vol. xvii,— No. 436 



impossible that the Trocadero buildings can be ready by 

 May I, so there will be ample time for these arrangements 

 and for the others, to which we may briefly allude. 



The French Association for the Advancement of 

 Science will conduct a large number of scientific experi- 

 ments on a great scale, and a large number of exhibitors 

 will take advantage of the meeting of that association 

 to exhibit experiments relating to their special pursuits. 



Every facility will also be given to scientific socie- 

 ties for summoning to a special congress those pro- 

 secuting the same line of research. The number of 

 these useful assemblies is increasing daily. It would 

 occupy too much space to give a list of all the societies 

 which will hold such meetings, but many circulars illus- 

 trating the development of this sectional movement have 

 already been printed. 



Lecture-rooms will be furnished gratis, lectures will 

 be advertised on a large scale, and, as far as possible. 

 Government apparatus will be at the disposal of 

 inventors for conducting the experiments required to 

 illustrate their lectures. What has been done at the 

 provisional Ethnographical Museum, to which we have 

 already referred, may be considered as a fair specimen of 

 what will be done on a larger scale at the Trocadero 

 Palace and other suitable buildings. 



It may be said that nothing will be spared to make the 

 Exhibition useful to science and intelligible in its scien- 

 tific aspects for the largest number of people. 



Surely England might have been] able to contribute 

 something of interest to this most interesting side of the 

 Exhibition ? We surely must, after all, be merely a nation 

 of shopkepeers seeing that our Royal Commissioners have 

 doubted our capabilities in any other direction ! 



METROLOGY 



Inductive Metrology j or, The Recovery of Ancient Mea- 

 sures from the Monuments. By W. M. Flinders Petrie. 

 (London: Saunders, 1877.) 



THIS work has a somewhat ambitious title, but it may 

 fairly claim to be written upon a scientific basis, and 

 it bears evidence of much study and laborious research. 

 It is an attempt to carry out generally the method 

 originated by Sir Isaac Newton, in his well-known 

 Dissertation on Cubits, of determining the length of the 

 ancient Egyptian cubit from some of the measured 

 dimensions of the great pyramid. By a similar process 

 the author has endeavoured to determine the ancient 

 standards of linear measure in various countries from the 

 measurements of remaining monuments. No allusions 

 are made to weights and volumes, but only to linear 

 quantities, as these alone are shown by the architectural 

 remains. 



In accordance with Whewell's definition of " induc- 

 tion," Mr. Petrie says that " inductive metrology ascertains 

 the * general truths ' of the units of measure in use from 

 the ' particular facts ' of those multiples of measures which 

 ancient remains preserve to us." He assumes that in the 

 construction of all such works, if a measure existed, it 

 would be used, and that whole numbers would be used in 

 preference to fractions and round numbers in preference to 

 uneven ones, merely for convenience in the work. We know 



